Next story in Chile earthquake

CONCEPCION, Chile — When their 13th-floor apartment began to shake, Alberto Rozas pulled his 7-year-old daughter into the bathroom doorway and waited for it to stop.

Instead, they fell.

Thirteen stories they plummeted as their brand-new apartment building toppled like a felled tree, hugging each other all the way down.

Rozas had no idea which way was up until he looked through his apartment's shattered window and spotted light — "the light of the full moon."

Rozas and his daughter, Fernanda, clambered up and to safety with nothing more than a few cuts, scrapes and bruises.

"The earthquake and the fall were one single, horrible thing," Rozas told The Associated Press on Sunday. "I held onto her and she never let me go."

Neighbors still trapped
Rozas' neighbors who lived on the other side of the hall found themselves trapped beneath the structure, as rescuers painstakingly used electric saws and a generator-powered hammer to cut into the concrete.